MAN APPEALS SENTENCE IN GOOD HOPE MELEE

A 20-year-old Cape Girardeau man is continuing to chip away at criminal charges that had put him in prison for 25 years.

Dmitri Bell is attempting to cut up to 10 years from his stay in prison after successfully appealing a 7-year sentence last fall for interfering with an arrest. An appeal of two drug convictions was filed with the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District this week.

In November, judges of the Missouri Court of Appeals Southern District changed Bell's felony conviction, connected to a confrontation involving police and a crowd estimated at 150 on June 11, 1999. Bell was one of eight arrested that night after rocks and bricks were hurled at police.

Coupled with three 5-year drug sentences imposed for violating probation, Bell was sentenced to more years in prison than anyone else arrested in the melee.

Bell's current appeal to the Eastern District Appeals Court relates to convictions for possession of marijuana and crack cocaine. Police said the narcotics were seized from Bell about 1 a.m. on June 10, 1999, as he was sleeping in a car in the 400 block of Good Hope Street.

Police said they removed a plastic bag containing about 8 grams of marijuana and 3 grams of crack cocaine from Bell's left hand, after which the officers woke Bell and told him to get out of the car. But when a crowd began to gather around the car, one officer was distracted and Bell was able to run away.

No link

In his appeal for Bell, defense attorney Kent Denzel has said no link between the plastic bag taken from Bell and the drugs presented in court was ever established. Prosecutors only proved that police had found Bell had a bag with "a green, leafy substance and a white rock substance," Denzel said.

Since Bell never objected that the five packets of marijuana and one packet of cocaine taken by police were his until after his conviction, it is too late for the Appeals Court to issue a ruling, said Lisa Sutherland, assistant state attorney general.

Denzel is also asking the three-judge panel to examine the use of a police mug shot of Bell requested by jurors during his trial. The attorney contends that the photograph, showing a series of numbers below Bell's face, made the jury prejudiced against his client, who has a prior criminal record.

Since the mug shot of Bell was taken on June 12, 1999, in connection with the drug seizure two days earlier, no prejudice was involved, Sutherland said.

It is uncertain when the Appeals Court will issue a decision in Bell's case, Denzel said.